Book reviews 155

the book has considerable merits so the question: ‘‘Whoshould read the book?’’ is highly relevant. Anyone interestedin the role of overarching discourse in societal constructionshould find reading of interest. Many companies are born andgrow in contexts of this type. The book probably provides agood perspective on modern entrepreneurship. It also con-tains an interesting example of doing ethnography in a lessthan coherent society. Anyone who needs his world view ofSweden challenged should definitely read the current book.Furthermore, a book like this — even though the text at timesis rambling — makes the reader contemplate a variety ofissues. The rambling makes the reader aware of his/her ownthoughts and provokes thinking. All in all, the book providesuseful food for thought even though the ‘‘smorgardsbord’’ isnot always clearly visible.

A personal twist to reading the book could be added. Inthe early 1960s the geographical area constituted a trainingground for the military and the reviewer at that time was

practicing artillery warfare on these grounds which have nowbeen transformed completely. At that, now quite a fewfamily members with immigrant backgrounds live in thatvery same area.

Rolf A. Lundin*Jonkoping International Business School,

Jonkoping University,P.O. Box 1026, SE-551 11 Jonkoping,

Sweden

*Tel.: +46 36 10 17 06/15 61 67;fax: +46 36 16 00 70

E-mail address: rolf.a.lundin@jibs.hj.se(R A.Lundin)

doi:10.1016/j.scaman.2010.10.004

Managing Service Firms: The Power of ManagerialMarketing, P. Skalen, Routledge, London/NewYork,(2010), 185 pp., hardback, ISBN: 978-0-415-47326-2.

Academic disciplines discipline academics. The ways in whichuniversities are organized and categorized — in researchgroups, departments, faculties and disciplines — tend toconstruct artificial boundaries between researchers andresearch projects. These boundaries, often meaningful onlyfor administrative reasons, make it difficult to engage inacademic conversations to which one belongs intellectuallyin a straightforward and direct manner. In order to meet andtalk to other researchers with similar theoretical, methodo-logical and empirical interests, so called ‘‘cross-disciplinary’’arrangements of various kinds have to be organized.

I read Per Skalen’s book Managing Service Firms: ThePower of Managerial Marketing partly as an important con-tribution to the bridging of some of these artificial bound-aries, notably that between organization and marketingstudies. In a global capitalism in which the market modelhas become one of the (if not the) most influential models forthe organization of relations of all conceivable sorts —between human beings, between humans and animals,between culture and nature, between before, now and then— the distinction between organization studies and market-ing studies becomes not only obsolete but also potentiallycounterproductive for the development of knowledge.

Skalen’s book is, in itself, a good example of how difficult,and also meaningless, it can be to draw such a distinction. Itsimply does not matter whether the book is a text in orga-nization studies or if it belongs to the field of marketingresearch. As it happens, the text has been categorized as amarketing book dealing with organizational issues; it is mar-keted as a part of Routledge’s book series ‘‘InterpretiveMarketing Research’’. But the book is also an organizationbook dealing with marketing as a way of organizing business.Managing Service Firms should thus in my view be read as a

reminder of how marketing and organizing practices oftenare intertwined.

In Managing Service Firms Skalen analyses the Swedishloan giver the Financial Institute (FI) and the attempts tocultivate a customer orientation in the consumer loans divi-sion. In 2002, due in part to a growing competition from otherbanks, a major strategic shift was initiated by the FI manage-ment. The idea was to replace the previous low-price strat-egy with a service and customer oriented culture. Throughthe reconfiguration of the subjectivities of frontline employ-ees the FI management tried to transform a bureaucraticorganization of clerks into an organization guided by custo-mer orientation and service mindedness.

The bulk of the argument is presented in three empiricalchapters (chapters 4—6). In chapter 4, the FI management’sinitiation of the customer orientation program named ‘‘Iwant to help you’’ (indeed an eerie slogan within the bankand loan industry against the relief of the recent, or present,financial crisis) is discussed. The program was supposed topromote a customeristic ethic, that is, a focus on ‘‘customerneeds and demands as the point of reference for manage-ment, organizational behavior, the design and developmentof organizational forms and the products and services thatorganizations offer’’ (p. 16).

In chapter 5, the argument is developed further by meansof a discussion of the introduction of the discourse of custo-mer perceived service quality. In addition to this, the imple-mentation of quality measurement instruments and coachingpractices is analysed in this chapter.

In chapter 6, the last of the three empirical chapters,the language of relationship marketing is presented as theother main discourse informing the transformation of theFI employees from clerks to customer oriented serviceproviders.

Drawing upon Foucault’s writings on knowledge/power,and in particular the notions of pastoral and disciplinarypower, Skalen situates his project very close to the field ofcritical management studies. The service marketing andmanagement discourses (and practices) highlighted in this

doi:10.1016/j.scaman.2010.08.003

156 Book reviews

book are interpreted as elements of the strategic machineryinfusing customerism and service mindedness into the sub-jectivities of the FI employees. Disciplinary power is exer-cised through the imposition of norms and the use ofexaminations of various kinds, e.g. service quality surveys,in order to ensure that the staff is on the right track. Pastoralpower, on the other hand, operates through the positioning ofmanagers as pastors and the employees as a flock of sheep inneed of guidance and salvation. The pastoral power at FI wasmaterialized in the form of confessional techniques such asself-reflexive exercises and telecoaching in which phoneconversations with customers were recorded and subse-quently discussed.

The argument presented by Skalen is admirably straight-forward and clear: marketing knowledge put into practicehas productive consequences for the organization of socialrelations, both internally between organizational membersand externally to customers.

However, the double-edged focus on disciplinary andpastoral power varies a bit in strength and sharpness. Attimes the discussions of the exercise of pastoral powerbecome somewhat sketchy and preliminary. With the excep-tion of the idea of the confession, Skalen never really engageswith the Christian roots of pastoral power. In one of Fou-cault’s more explanatory texts, pastoral power is delineatedin terms of four characteristics: (i) the aim of pastoral poweris salvation (in the afterworld), (ii) pastoral power involves asacrifice for the flock, (iii) pastoral power takes an interest inboth the individual and the flock as a whole, (iv) pastoralpower needs knowledge of the conscience of people (Fou-cault, 1982: 783). Thus, pastoral power seems to operate intwo directions. On the one hand, it is a commanding andinstructive power, but it is also, on the other, a sacrificingpower aiming for the salvation of the flock. I would have likedto see a more elaborate discussion of these aspects ofpastoral power. What kind of sacrifice can the subject expectfrom the pastor/manager? What kind of salvation does busi-ness promise; health, security or protection (Foucault, 1982:784)?

Furthermore, more attention could have been paid to thetransformation of the social relations in and around FI.Arguably, the relations between subjects are a crucial aspectof a decentered, Foucauldian notion of power. Insofar aspower is dispersed throughout society, subject positions areto be seen as constituted and defined in relation to otherpositions. The parent is defined in relation to the child, theteacher in relation to the student and themanager in relationto the employee.

However, the relational analysis of the introduction ofnew discourses, programs and practices at FI is not so visiblein Managing Service Firms, perhaps with the important

exception of the discussion of the pastoral relation betweenthe pastor and the flock.

For instance, the reconfigurations of the relationsbetween frontline employees and customers would havebeen a relevant object of study in this research project.How are these relations influenced by a customerist ethic?Disciplining the loan customer, teaching him or her to be ademanding customer, is probably as important as is thedisciplining of frontline employees.

The absence of relations in Skalen’s power/knowledgeanalysis is perhaps a consequence of the research designof the study. The empirical material comprises in total 41interviews with managers, back office staff and frontlineemployees. If the ambition is to study ‘‘whether or not,and how, SMM [servicemarketing andmanagement] practicesorder organizations and their members’’ (p. 162), interviewsmay just not suffice.

The ways in which people organize themselves andbecome organized are not always a part of our reflexiveconsciousness. The interactional rules of everyday life,silently ordering the ways in which we relate to each other,are often difficult to verbalize retrospectively in interviewaccounts.

These caveats notwithstanding, Managing Service Firms isdoubtless an important contribution to the study of organiza-tions and organizing. The book is also a valuable contributionto studies of marketing practice and the practice of market-ing, particularly as a reminder of the importance of studyingmarketing knowledge in terms of its social, political, exis-tential and material consequences for the everyday organi-zation of human relations. ‘‘To know knowledge’’ (Foucault,1997: 36), especially one’s own, is one of the most importantskills that a business school can offer its students. Skalen’sbook can be very helpful in such an enterprise.

References

Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4),777—795.

Foucault, M. (1997). The politics of truth. New York: Semiotext(e).

Peter Svensson*Department of Business Administration,

School of Economics and Management, Lund University,P.O. Box 7080, SE-220 07 Lund, Sweden

*Tel.: +46 462220186; fax: +46 462224437E-mail address: peter.svensson@fek.lu.se